Official Opening of Semakau Landfill for Recreational Activities, by Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Dr Yaacob Ibrahim.

The Blue Water Volunteers were there to set up the Reef Exhibits booth, create awareness and make our presence felt! Getting pictures of VIPs visiting the booth is rather difficult when you’re short and surrounded by press photographers with their HUGE cams plus a crowd of other important people….. So we only got pictures of other very important people – those closer to our hearts:

A lady admiring posters of the rich marine life on our shores.

Former residents of Pulau Semakau and Pulau Sakeng browse through all the photos we have, reliving happy memories of life on the island. This particular lady is thrilled to recognise most of the marine organisms. “Oh! Batu Orkid!” (Oh! Orchid-rock!) as she points at pictures of some corals. When she sees a picture of a scorpion fish, she recounts how she had been stung twice, and the best remedy for stings is to rub ‘belacan’ on the affected area!

She tells us how she would catch featherduster worms, and sell them as bait for 20 cents. Then she sees the picture of a tape seagrass fruit and says “Oh, ini sedap!” (This is tasty!) and her friend goes on to warn us that if we ate the fruit we will turn into “ikan duyung” (mermaids)!

Jani was on hand to greet and speak to Dr Yaacob Ibrahim. Luckily, she wasn’t her usual self when he stopped by the booth for a chat…

With KLOG sounding Neanderthal-ish and all, I thought I’d end with this —

Neanderthal Man: You woman, make home. We men, hunt food, feed woman.

But in “KLOG World”, we believe we have to move with the times….. So even our guys are getting into the whole metrosexual-act macho-yet try to look good-thing. They even ‘hunt’ for food with flair…..

Sorry, Danwei and MS! You can’t possibly allow me to take your pic, then not post it rite?

Ok, gotta go get rid of my Stingoes and stock up my first aid kit with belacan for the next walk.

For a more detailed and proper report of what went on, readRia’s post on the WildFilms Blog.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 17th, 2005 at 2:21 am and is filed under Conservation, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.